ULIV moves its 1,000-unit Mexican aparthotel portfolio onto Mews

ULIV, an aparthotel operator based in Mexico City, has picked Mews to run its properties as it grows past 1,000 units. The first properties are already live, and they are managed from the company's corporate office rather than from a desk at each building.

For anyone running serviced apartments or flex living, the interesting part is not the logo swap. It is why ULIV moved at all.

From 20 apartments to a hotel-shaped business

ULIV started in 2020 with 20 apartments. It now manages more than 1,000 units on behalf of real estate developers and landlords, handling dynamic pricing, revenue optimisation, guest support and maintenance for them. It began in the Mexico City neighbourhoods of Polanco, Condesa, Roma and Juárez, then expanded to Tijuana and Ensenada.

That growth is what broke the old setup. Enrique Negrete, ULIV's Chief Commercial Officer, said the company started on technology built for short-term rentals and needed a partner that could grow with it as it moved into hotels. What he wanted was "one system to run multiple properties from our corporate office."

This is a familiar squeeze. Short-term rental software handles listings, channels and messaging well, but it tends to assume one owner and a handful of units. Hotel systems handle rate structures, multi-property reporting and centralised teams, but they historically assumed a front desk. Operators in the middle end up stitching two stacks together.

ULIV is running Mews PMS, Mews Channel Manager and Mews RMS, and using the Open APIs to connect a guest experience app, a task manager and its own data team.

What happens next

ULIV expects to bring another 500 to 600 units onto Mews by the first half of 2027, subject to its own plans. It is aiming for 3,000 units within a couple of years, expanding further across Mexico and into the United States.

Michael Coscetta, President of Mews, called Mexico "one of the most dynamic hospitality markets in the world" and said Mews is committed to supporting operators like ULIV there for the long term. Mews says it now serves 15,000 customers in 85 countries.

What it means for operators

Two practical notes the announcement leaves out.

First, the release does not say what ULIV is migrating away from, or how long the remaining units will sit on the old system. If you are planning a staged migration across a portfolio, that overlap period is the expensive part, and nobody's press release ever covers it.

Second, if the Channel Manager piece is what appeals to you, check the detail before you plan around it. Mews Channel Manager is powered by SiteMinder, and when Mews announced it in August it said the rollout was gradual, starting with properties that already use SiteMinder, and that it could not migrate existing Booking.com direct and Expedia direct integrations. Those are exactly the two connections most operators already have running. Worth asking where that stands before you assume distribution moves across on day one.

For the wider market, the signal is about category rather than country. A manager with 1,000 units and a central revenue team now looks more like a small hotel group than a rental business, and it is buying accordingly.